Into The Night
by Kirmon64
Summary: [G1] Do Cybertronians dream? Not exactly. But there is something strangely similar going on amongst all the Transformers... /mild StarscreamxSkyfire/


This strange idea simply popped into my head out of the blue... although it may have been influenced by the StarTrek: Voyager ep "Unimatrix Zero". Who knows. Anyway, I'm not really all that familiar with the G1'verse, having only watched about 13 episodes - though I have read a whole lot of fanfic, which I know can be rather... misleading at times. Also, sorry if this is a little confusing - it all made sense in my head, but considering I was the one who wrote it...

**Disclaimer:** Don't own. The TFs belong to Hasbro/Takara; the song I've used in here is called "_Into the Night_" and it's by Santana and Nickelback.

* * *

_Like a gift from the heavens  
It was easy to tell,  
It was love from above  
That could save me from hell  
She had fire in her soul,  
It was easy to see  
How the devil himself could be pulled out of me...  
There were drums in the air  
As she started to dance,  
Every soul in the room keeping time with their hands  
And we sang..._

He could hear drums.

At least, that was what he thought they were. His mind had taken on a sort of fuzzy heaviness that made it impossible to recall certain things. He didn't remember what he was - although he was sure it started with a 'D' - and he couldn't even recall his name. Something to do with... night? Screaming? He couldn't remember, but he really couldn't bring himself to care.

The drums were getting louder.

Curious, the sleek jet began to half-walk, half-jog towards the sound. Almost instinctively, he knew that he was safe, that no harm would come to him in this strange place. The landscape seemed to be a mishmash of both Earth and Cybertronian features; the huge trees that towered above his head were metallic all the way to their leaves; the sky had only one moon like Earth, but it was more clear and filled with stars than any night on the planet had been. Even the ground was a patchwork - every other step the jet took created the clanking sound of metal on metal, but there were large patches of soil and grass covering parts of the steel plating.

Suddenly, the metallic trees seemed to disappear from around the confused jet, revealing a sort of clearing. It wasn't the clearing itself that made him gape in surprise, unusual-looking though it was; the long grass within was both organic and mechanical, and it grew in all the colors of the rainbow. No, it was the mechs and femmes scattered throughout the clearing that caught his attention.

Some he was sure he knew. He didn't know their names or really anything about them, but he _knew _that he'd met them before. There was a trio of mechs, jets like himself, near the edge; the first was purple, the one sitting practically on top of him was blue, and a short distance away there was a golden one. They seemed familiar, very familiar, but he simply couldn't remember who they were.

Across the clearing there was a pair of solidly-built mechs, almost identical in appearance. He was sure that he'd never seen the red one before, but the dark blue was... sound... sound something, he was sure of it. But the blue one wasn't acting like he'd expected him to, and indeed there was something very different about his face... and then it clicked.

He had no facemask - his features were exposed for all to see - and he was _laughing_. Not a cold, heartless laugh, but one that was carefree and filled with excitement. He and his red counterpart were the ones creating the sound of drums; the jet could practically see the air vibrating around their frames.

The jet's gaze swept over the clearing again. A tall white mech caught his attention, and the more he watched the mech, the more he realized that he knew this mech - knew him better than he knew himself. The white jet, too, was glancing around the clearing as though he was looking for someone. It didn't take long for their gazes to meet, and with a start the smaller jet realized he knew the white one's name.

"_Skyfire_!" he cried in shock and joy.

"_Starscream_!" came the answering call.

The smaller jet wasn't sure how, but within moments he had crossed the expansive clearing and was in the white jet's arms in a hug, their mouths pressed together in a delighted kiss.

Skyfire was the one to break their contact, instead opting to regard his former wingmate fondly. "Let's dance."

Starscream smiled in return, leaping into the air to transform and spiral away into the night sky. "Let's."

_Like a piece to the puzzle that falls into place,  
You could tell how we felt from the look on our faces  
We were spinning in circles with the moon in our eyes,  
No room left to move in between you and I  
We forgot where we were and we lost track of time  
And we sang to the wind as we danced through the night  
And we sang…_

He didn't know how long they danced through the sky together, and really, why did it matter? He was here with Skyfire, and they were safe from anything and everything.

Eventually they both landed, energon pounding in their audio receptors from the sheer exhilaration of the dance. But they were both far from tired. Skyfire transformed almost instantly after his touchdown and swung Starscream up into his arms, laughing as he spun the smaller Seeker in circles. He couldn't keep up his momentum forever, though, and after several moments the now dizzy jets toppled to the ground, grinning.

Starscream was the first to move, not that Skyfire could really move anyway thanks to the fact that the smaller jet was sprawled across his chest. Dancing to the ever-present drumbeat, he ran back towards the crowd of other mechs, Skyfire trailing behind.

The overpowering urge to just _dance_, just let all his worries and unhappy thoughts float away was at the forefront of Starscream's mind. He squeezed into the mass of writhing bodies with ease and could practically feel everything unneeded just slipping away. There was no Megatron. No war. No Autobots - or Decepticons. Nothing except the other mechs and femmes nearby, the pounding of the drums, and the sensation of Skyfire mimicking his movements against his back.

_Like a gift from the heavens  
It was easy to tell,  
It was love from above  
That could save me from hell  
She had fire in her soul,  
It was easy to see  
How the devil himself could be pulled out of me...  
There were drums in the air  
As she started to dance,  
Every soul in the room keeping time with their hands  
And we sang..._

At some point - he couldn't recall when, and really, it didn't matter - Starscream became aware of the fact that he was dancing alone with Skyfire, enclosed in a ring of bots clapping to the beat.

"It seems we have an audience!"

"It does, doesn't it?"

He reached for his wingmate's hand and gripped it tightly, shuttering his optics and allowing the beat to take over his body until that was all his very existence consisted of. And yet, he could still feel Skyfire right there beside him... right where he would always be, in mind if not in body.

It felt... _wonderful_.

A sudden tingling sensation swept over his body and he unshuttered his optics in surprise, just in time to catch Skyfire's loving gaze and his whispered, "Stay safe. I'll be waiting..."

And then all was black.

* * *

When Starscream awoke from recharge thanks to his internal alarm, he was less than pleased. Even now, as he rose from his berth with hazy optics, he could recall... something. A dream? Perhaps. He remembered Skyfire's presence - could still feel it - but everything else was just a whirl of colors and sensations.

And... a drum?

Shaking his head, Starscream pushed the dream-vision from his mind. It would do him no good to be distracted. He left his quarters with a still slightly-sidetracked processor, trying his level best not to dance along to the ghost of the drumbeat he could hear in his audios.

Some distance down the corridor, Soundwave too emerged from his quarters, Cassetticons trailing behind sleepily. Instead of getting straight to work as he normally did, the communications officer simply stood and stared at the approaching Seeker with an expression that was, like usual, completely unreadable.

Starscream fidgeted uneasily under the scrutiny of the resident telepath, keeping his mental walls high. "What!?" he snapped with a glare.

Soundwave merely tilted his head slightly in curiosity for several moments before asking a question: "Did you dream?"

The Seeker blinked in surprise, trying to formulate an answer. Yes, he had dreamt of... something. But what, exactly, was something difficult to remember.

Soundwave quietly began to play a tune... a familiar one. Without thinking, Starscream began to move in time with the drumbeat, one hand outstretched as though he was asking someone - Skyfire, perhaps? - to join him.

"As I thought," the telepath said softly, stopping the music and walking away, leaving an annoyed - and slightly disappointed - Starscream behind.

* * *

It wasn't a dream.

Starscream had come to that realization some time ago. Cybertronians couldn't exactly dream anyways. And besides... there was no way a single dream could be shared by so many. Both Thundercracker and Skywarp had asked him about it on their daily patrol; they'd experienced practically the same thing as he had, except they didn't remember Skyfire: rather, they remembered a single Seeker dancing to the beat that everyone seemed to know.

He'd even caught Megatron humming snatches of it.

He had half a mind to fly over to the Ark and risk getting permanently offlined just so he could ask the Autobots if they'd experienced this dreamlike phenomenon as well. It was the scientist buried within him, he supposed, fighting to get out. He squashed the irrational wish before it could lodge itself in his processor.

Skyfire had, after all, told him to stay safe.

* * *

He could hear drums.

The beat was both infectious and familiar, and though Starscream couldn't recall where he'd heard it before - couldn't even recall his own name in this dream-world - it was almost an instinct to just go with the flow.

"You came back."

The Seeker looked up from his dance through the metallic trees to see none other than Skyfire towering over him with a smile on his features.

"Of course. I always will."

The white jet leapt into the air and transformed, rocketing away into the clear night sky. "Let's dance."

Starscream followed without hesitation, feeling more free than ever before. "Let's."

_And we sang...  
Ay oh ay oh ay oh ay,  
And the voices rang like the angels sing,  
And singing…  
Ay oh ay oh ay oh ay,  
And we danced on into the night..._


End file.
